


All of his Family

by Dodoa



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Almost completely angst-free, Based on a True Story, Christmas, Christmas Presents, Fluff, Gen, the perfect christmas present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 00:58:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9048952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dodoa/pseuds/Dodoa
Summary: Rosie's first Christmas,  but someone important is missing.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scrub456](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrub456/gifts).



> Look, I actually managed to write a Christmas story this year!

“Alright we’ll be there for lunch, see you then.”

“Do you really think we should go?“ John asked as Mary was getting off the phone. He knew it was a bit late to voice his objections, but he couldn’t help it. The thought of visiting Sherlock’s parents over Christmas without Sherlock just felt wrong.

“They invited us and we accepted. It would be rude to cancel now. Especially because they just called to confirm we are still coming.”

“It’s just, it will be awkward without him,” he shrugged, not sure how else to put it.

Mary snorted, “I could have told you that before we knew about Sherlock. It was always going to be awkward after what happened last year. At least this way there’s no danger of anyone getting drugged this year.” John couldn’t help but smile at that, Sherlock had fucked things up royally last year. Thanks to Mary that mess had worked out (mostly) fine, though it was the reason, Sherlock wouldn’t be home for Christmas.

“Are you sure they really want us to come, now that we aren’t needed to bully Sherlock into attending?” John asked. He had assumed that that was the main reason they had been invited again.

“Of course they do, we have more assets than our superior Sherlock wrangling skills,” Mary joked, before adding a little more serious: “We have an adorable eight-month-old, who is probably the closest thing to a grandchild Sherlock’s parents are going to get, for example.”

“We are a bit short in the grandparents department, I guess.” John gladly relented.

“Oh, between Mrs Hudson and the Holmeses, I think we’ll be alright...”

 

Sometimes John thought that Christmas might be cursed. At least for him. Or maybe everyone else was just pretending when they said, they’d had a lovely Christmas. Thinking about it he’d done that a few times himself. Because John couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually enjoyed Christmas. If the last shred of Christmas cheer hadn’t been crushed by everyday awfulness by Christmas Day, there always seemed to be a nasty surprise in store for him.

Last year it had been Sherlock’s attempt to stop Magnussen that spoiled an otherwise hopeful Christmas. The two years before that John hadn’t even bothered trying. The first year with Sherlock could have been nice if it hadn’t been for Irene Adler and Sherlock’s remote deduction of Harry. Before that he’d been deployed, not even trying to get leave over Christmas, since there was no one waiting for him at home anyway. And even before that, at university, all his friends had been gone over the holidays, while he had nowhere to go. Going even further back he couldn’t remember a single Christmas, where no one had been fighting or crying.

Despite the crushing trend in statistics he’d been hopeful that this year would be different. He’d been hopeful right up until a week before Christmas when Mycroft had informed him that Sherlock had once again been called away by the crown. That kind of thing didn’t happen as often as John had feared when the deal was first struck. At least not on this scale. Most of the time Sherlock was just whisked away for a few hours of what he called data wrangling, but over the past year he’d also been sent away on three bigger missions, lasting a few weeks each, and this one was the fourth.

Mycroft had assured John that Sherlock would be back shortly after New Years. Naturally, John didn’t trust him. Mycroft’s estimates hadn’t been wrong so far, but John doubted that Mycroft would hesitate to lie to him if it served some purpose. After all he still remembered the true nature of that first aborted mission neither Sherlock nor Mycroft had told him about. He hadn’t found out about that one until Mary had already prevented it from happening with her well-timed footage.

Since neither of them trusted Mycroft to inform them if Sherlock was in danger, Mary had taken to hacking into the MI6 servers to make sure everything was going according to plan whenever he was on a mission. John had to admit that sometimes it paid off, being married to a spy.

 

* * *

 

 

“Why are we doing this again? Haven’t you learned your lesson last year?” Mycroft had just arrived a few minutes ago and was already complaining. John would have said he was whining if he hadn’t learned the true meaning of that word, while living with Sherlock.

“We thought we could make this a tradition,” Mrs Holmes answered, ignoring the accusatory tone. “It’ll be nice, now that there’s a child to enjoy it,” she finished with a fond look over to Mary who was holding a sleeping Rosie in her lap.

“It’s not even your grandchild!” Mycroft scoffed.

“Well, are _you_ planning on giving us grandchildren, Mike?” Mrs Holmes asked with a dangerous glint in her eye. John barely managed to suppress a laugh at Mycroft’s look of pure horror.

Mrs Holmes didn’t wait for the obvious answer before continuing: “Do you think you could talk your brother into it?” Mycroft’s expression impossibly turned even more horrified and John lost his grip on his composure and let out a rather undignified snort, which set off Mary who, as John now realised, had been fighting a similar battle, while she was doing something on her phone.

“In that case,” Mrs Holmes went on, disregarding the merriment she had caused and again not waiting for Mycroft to answer. “I don’t think you can complain about us looking elsewhere.”

“Your desire to become unpaid child minders aside,” Mycroft argued once he got over his shock, “that doesn’t explain why I have to be here.”

“You, Mike, are here because you sent your brother away.”

“That was hardly my fault! He got himself in that mess,” Mycroft tried to defend himself, but Mrs Holmes wouldn’t have any of it: “It’s Christmas, Mike and you knew we had plans! Don’t tell me you couldn’t have delayed that mission for a few weeks.”

While she continued to gently scold Mycroft for what seemed to be every transgression since he was nine and had told two-year-old Sherlock that Father Christmas wasn’t real, John wandered over to Mary, intending to ask her if she wanted anything from the kitchen, while he got himself some tea. When he got to her chair he immediately forgot about that, because he saw that she was filming the exchange on her phone.

“It’ll make a great Christmas present for Sherlock,” she whispered, looking up.

John just had to kiss her for that.

 

Later that day, it was now officially Christmas Eve, John walked back into the living room after putting Rosie down for the night. Sherlock’s parents and Mary were gathered around the coffee table. Mycroft wasn’t around, having gone upstairs to work after dinner. Someone had turned down the lights while he’d been gone, so the room was cosily dark, illuminated only by the fireplace, the fairy lights on the Christmas tree and a few candles on the coffee table. It looked like a Christmas card. There was only one thing that would have made it more perfect. John had been looking forward to spending Christmas with Sherlock and now that he wasn’t here, a part of his family was missing.

Mary disrupted his maudlin by gesturing for him to come over and asking after Rosie.

“She was exhausted, so she fell asleep quickly, despite the unfamiliar environment,” he answered sitting down on the arm of her chair. That’s when he noticed the present sitting on the table in front of them. “So what’s that?” John asked, curious now. The present was wrapped in the same the same wrapping paper he and Mary had used this year, but he didn’t remember loading anything of this particular size in their car this morning. He also didn’t remember seeing it under the Christmas tree, though admittedly he could have easily missed it there.

Mary leaned forward to pick up the present and passed it to John, with a secretive smile on her face.

“It’s for you.”

“So why can’t this one wait for tomorrow morning?” John teased. Sherlock’s parents were sitting right there so it wasn’t about privacy, in that case Mary would have done this in their bedroom. Now that he was paying attention he could see that Mr Holmes was just as curious as he was, while Mrs Holmes smiled knowingly and maybe almost a bit giddily. Either she was involved, or she had just been quicker to figure it out than he was.

“It expires at midnight,” Mary answered. Huh, he hadn’t been expecting that. It was too big for any kind of gift certificate and he couldn’t think of anything else that would have such an exact expiration date.

“Well don’t just stare at it, open it!” Mary nudged him, suddenly impatient.

John didn’t need to be told twice. He tore the paper off, revealing a flat nondescript box. Mary turned on the lamp on the side table just as John opened the box and came face to face with Sherlock.

“Hello John,” the Sherlock on the screen of Mary’s iPad said while a little window in the bottom right corner showed John’s astonishment. The feed from Sherlock’s end showed nothing but him and a white wall with no identifying features behind him.

“Sherlock! I thought we weren’t allowed to do this! Mycroft said it’s too dangerous!” John exclaimed, caught between joy and worry. Getting to talk to Sherlock was the best Christmas present Mary could have got him. Whatever happened tomorrow, this would be his favourite present this year, possibly ever. He worried, however, that Sherlock was taking too big a risk for this little call. Right now, the joy was winning, though.

“That’s why Mycroft doesn’t know about this,” Sherlock grinned. “Right now the danger is minimal; I’m in a safe house, my target doesn’t even know I’m in the country and the connection is secure, thanks for that Mary. Mycroft just told you that you could never contact me when I’m on a mission, so you wouldn’t make a fuss when you _really_ couldn’t contact me, because it was _actually_ too dangerous.”

“So why didn’t we do this, when you were away before now? Or were those _actually_ dangerous missions?”

“One of them, yes. And it’s not actually that easy to set up. Mary, do you want to explain?”

“Sure, so in order for this to be safe, we need to go through the MI6 network. The same connection they use to communicate with their agents. The codes for the encryption are randomly generated and change every 24 hours, which is why this connection expires at midnight. The only way you can get those codes is from the MI6 server or a device communicating with it. I could hack the servers, but so far I haven’t been able to do it undetected for long enough to set up the connection and give you at least a few minutes to talk and once the system recognises the intrusion, all codes are automatically changed. That’s where Mrs Holmes came in. Say hi to your parents Sherlock!” Mary took the tablet from John, so she could turn Sherlock over to face his parents. “She managed to steal Mycroft’s laptop long enough to get the codes without him noticing, so they won’t change until midnight.”

“Thank you Mary, now could you hand me back to John?”

They talked until midnight, John handed Sherlock over a few times in the beginning, so the others got to talk to him too, but Sherlock’s parents went to bed after the first hour and Mary followed their example, after instructing them on how to properly sever the connection before the codes changed. Sherlock couldn’t tell John much about the mission itself, but there were enough stories and observations to share, that only touched on the fringes of the mission, to keep them amused. They barely noticed the hours passing until Sherlock’s phone reminded them that it was time to go.

John went to bed that night, knowing that nothing could ever top this gift: Getting to spend Christmas with his family.

All of his family.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by two things, one good and one bad.  
> I realised that this year, for the first time in my life, I don't have any plans for Christmas Day, because we always had lunch and dinner with my paternal grandparents and they both passed away over the last year. So I felt a bit cut loose and like my family traditions were unravelling and I wanted to write something about new traditions being made.  
> Now for the good part, which inspired most of the plot. Some of my friends did something similar to what Mary did this year. It didn't involve stealin any encryption codes, because our friend is just doing a year abroad and not undercover on a mission. She is however about 7 timezones away, so we don't manage as much contact as we'd like. So at another friend's traditional pre-Christmas party the boyfriend of the first friend skyped her on his phone, put his phone in a box and wrapped it up to gift it to the host, so she could be at the party too and she got handed around all evening and it was all very sweet.


End file.
